This paper investigates the availability of double negation (DN) readings in Russian—traditionally considered to be a strict negative concord (NC) language. A judgment survey of native Russian speakers provides evidence that native speakers do in fact accept DN readings involving the negative marker "ne" and "ni za chto" (“for nothing”). To account for these available DN readings, a proposal based mainly on Zeijlstra’s framework of negative concord is presented. We hypothesize that "ni za chto" bears an optionally interpretable NEG feature; consequently, when "ni za chto" is fronted, it checks following uninterpretable NEG features and eliminates the available DN reading. Furthermore, we maintain that the negative marker "ne" is uninterpretably negative and provide support for an abstract negative operator, contrasting proposals similar to Déprez (2011, 2016) which treat the negative marker as the negative licensor in strict NC languages.